Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	bind_v	earth_n	loose_v	17,667	5	10.9453	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61908	A gospel-glasse, representing the miscarriages of English professors, both in their personal and relative capacities ..., or, A call from heaven to sinners and saints by repentance and reformation to prepare to meet God.	Stuckley, Lewis, 1621 or 2-1687.	1667 (1667)	Wing S6088; ESTC R13173	281,871	514

neglected to talk of what you have heard Have not some Not talking of it as soon as dismiss'd from the Sermon fallen into impertinent discourses about news and trifles or into worldly business Mat. 13.7 22. and so the thornes choak'd all the convictions which they received under the Ministry They consider not that the Word they have heard hath been the savour of life or of death 2 Cor. 2.16 and that every one that goes from a Sermon goes off either with God or the Devil in his company Have not you been hearers of the Word only Not practising it Jam. 1.22 and not doers of it Have not you so deceived your own selves Your Ministers have prest you to secret Prayer and to constancy in it but have not you gone away and continued in the neglect of that wherein the power of godliness and heart-sincerity mainly consists Blessed are they that hear the Word of God Luke 11.28 and keep it i. e. that are good Practitioners that have a conscionable care to regulate heart and life according to what they hear and know They are rather blest than the Mother of Christ was for bringing him into the World Christ puts a rather upon the good Practitioner than upon the Virgin Mary But alas Let it be for a Lamentation that so many Professours have been for hearing but for doing only what they listed Amos 8.5 6 7 8 9. Saying When will the new Moon be gone that we may sell Corn and the Sabbath that we may set forth Wheat Making the Ephah small and the Shekel great and falsifying the Ballances by deceit That we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shooes yea and sell the refuse of the Wheat The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob Surely I will never forget any of their works Shall not the Land tremble for this c The Kingdome of God shall be taken from you Mat. 21.43 Luke 12.43 and given to a Nation bringing forth the fruits thereof But Blessed is that Servant whom his Lord when he cometh shall find so doing When did you find the Glasses to discover and amend your Spots Have you been cast into the Form of the Doctrine which ye have received Have you obeyed from the heart the Form of Doctrine delivered to you Hath your profiting appear'd answerable to the many months and years you have sate under the Dews of Heaven What do you know more than you did before What do you believe love and hope for more than you did Have your hearts and lusts stooped more and more to this Scepter of Christ Believe it Sirs If Sin be not more odious and Christ more sweet and precious after you have been in the Shepheards Tents you have lost your hearing hours yea contracted more guilt to your Souls That you have not been chang'd from glory to glory is a great stain to the Ministry and a great ground of sadness to the poor Ministers who fear they have laboured in vain And yet have not you been such unprofitable hearers that Seekers Ranters and Quakers have took occasion to cry down the Office of the Ministry as a Cheat as an old Almanack out of date because they have seen how unsuccessful the labours of Christs Ministers have been upon your Souls If you had come down from these Mounts with your faces shining if you had received more of God upon your hearts and lives you had more credited the Ministry and put to silence these foolish men What shall I say A worse Famine is coming on Professours than what happened to Egypt and if you have laid up no store what will ye do in the years of lean Kine 7. Have not you greatly miscarried Their miscarriages as to consulting with their Ministers Mat. 16.19 as to consulting with them Though one great work of your Ministers was to deal personally with your Souls and God intrusted them with the power of binding and loosing doctrinally at least and hath promised to loose in Heaven what they loosed on Earth and to confirm the Word of his Servants Isa 44.26 and perform the Counsel of his Messengers yet how little weight have you laid upon their judgements Have not you more credited the Physicians opinion of your Bodies Laying little weight on their Judgements Not consulting with them at all and the Lawyers about your Estates than you have your Ministers concerning your Souls How seldome are Ministers consulted with about the business of the Soul and Eternity Will not they in the Acts rise up to condemn this Generation They repaired to Christs Ministers with Men and Brethren What shall we do to be saved Acts 2.37 But alas How many have sate 30 40 50. Years under a Minister and never advised with him what to do They have been no more moved Through hard Heartedness Bride than the Rocks were that Bede preached to Or else through the Pride of their hearts they have thought to heal themselves They have been so puff'd up with their own knowledge that they have not cared to hear what their Ministers could declare unto them If they be to take a Journey they will ask the Way of every one they meet but so unreasonably consident are they of their knowing the Way to Glory though there be many Wayes Prov. 14.12 that do indeed lead down to Hell yet seem the right Way to Heaven that they will not so much as ask the Way thither-ward of any Guide Prov. 26.16 The Fool is wiser in his own conceit than seven men thas can render a reason Or else they have thought as well of their Souls as some doe of their flesh Thinking the wound will heal of it self that the wound will heal of it self And hath it not so done no body knows how Can you tell how the troubles and impressions made by the Ministry in your own Souls have worn away have not Ministers sound after the House hath been swept and garnished that seven worse Spirits have entred into the Souls of many convinced and terrified Professors and their latter end was worse than their beginning Many saith famous Hooker in a stupid kind of sottish senselessness wear out the blow and so wast away to nothing as many out of sorrow have become like senseless blocks How oft hath Satan like a Cut-purse drawn thee into solitudes disswaded thee from going near thy Minister that he may rob thee of thy Convictions and the better to effect this hath he not perswaded thee to look on the Minister as proud high scorning to condescend to hear thy Soul grievances and complaints whereas he hath many and many a time with the greatest importunity beg'd this trouble of dressing thy sores If you have consulted with your Ministers Not consulting with them soon enough Acts 24.25 have not you delayed going to these Soul-Physicians When the wound was newly given and bleeding you should have

make more haste to cure a man that is taken with a swooning fit than one that hath a little swelling in his singer I wonder you are no more affected with the miseries that attend your Unregenerate Friends and Acquaintance who must suddenly be Converted or Damned Me-thinks you should pitty them the more because they pitty not themselves Me-thinks the value that Christ hath put upon Souls by bleeding for them the ransome that he hath given for miserable man and the unwearied pains he takes for the reducement of fall'n man should teach us to open our lips to give some directions and counsels to them who are within a stride of Hell but a breath between them and eternal ruine And yet how are Gods people straitned towards these forlorn and miserable undone condemned Creatures Though they are under the curse of the Law though the sentence of death be past against them and is ready to be executed every moment yet you exhort them not to flye from wrath to come If they will perish they may perish for any spiritual contribution that you will afford them It grieves me sometimes to see how Gods people eat up their own and others time with vain frothy and unsavory words When they should be speaking some rouzing startling words of Hell and Damnation of the necessity of Regeneration of Eternity of the foolish choice men make in preferring the pleasures of sin which are but for a season before eternal joyes of the deceits of the heart of the cheats of the Devil of the malignity of sin of the curse of the Law c. they are talking of this fashion or of that they are perhaps censuring one another but endeavouring nothing for the undeceiving their deluded Companions You cannot but know what advantages you have by your intimacies with them to deliver that to them which they will receive from you when Satan perhaps hath imbittered them against their Ministers so that all Pulpit-counsels and reproofs are lost upon them Besides You are in private with them and you know by your selves how loth how backward you were to apply the truths of God to your own Souls but you as Nathan to David may goe and say Thou art the Man thou the Woman You may hear their pleas for themselves and so have an opportunity to confute them whereas they are reserved to their Ministers though they have been friendly earnestly and frequently invited to a Christian conference And yet how do you neglect all these Opportunities of serving the Necessities of your Friends You pretend love unto them but how can ye see the blind before your eyes tumbling into the Lake of Hell and yet not call on them to return and live It is admirable that you should think you have the Divine Nature within you and yet be void of compassions to these miserable Objects who lye wounded before you where-ever you goe or come O! Me-thinks when you enter the house of an Unregenerate you should thus meditate Now have I an opportunity to save a Soul from Hell to have a greater conquest than Caesar or Alexander could boast of Now may I shew my self a Friend of God by pleading his right to the Creature Now may I have an occasion to make all the Angels of Heaven laugh and sing and all the cursed Devils to roar by saving a lost Son And will you see these wounded in your way and pass them by with an unmerciful Spirit If you see your Brother have need of outward things much more if needing Grace the Image of and Peace with God and you shut up your bowells of compassion from him how dwelleth the love of God in you You have some pitty left when you see a man fall'n under his horse or strugling for life upon the waters or in an house fired your bowells are turned within you But alas here are they that are dropping into the Lake of Fire every moment that are dragged up and down from one Lust to another by the Devil a sorer bondage by farr and yet you do not pitty them O! Pitty them pitty them Goe over to Macedonia and help them It is a grief to my Soul to consider how dull how useless Christians are in the Towns and Villages where Providence hath cast them If they meet with a man they will not so much as ask whether he be bound for Heaven or Hell whether he knows the necessity of the new Birth yea or no whether he hath left Sin as his greatest burden whether he be willing of Christ and Salvation by him upon his own terms Nay Professours will not so much as counsel them to read a good Book or lend them one if they are poor and unable to buy they will be at no cost to save a Soul that is really of more worth than a World How is it that you account your selves Christians whilst you have no higher esteems of Souls Or how can you have any assurance that you hate Sin whilst you labour not the removal of it in whomsoever you find it If you see men trifling away their time why do you not put them upon redeeming their time If you find them lovers of pleasures why do you not invite them and press them to look after cordial joy and mirth and the true pleasures that are at Gods right hand If you are the Subjects of Christ how can you endure Treason against him and not suppress it I 'le never believe that man ever mourned for sins of his own that doth not for sins of others or that he ever hated sin in himself that doth not endeavour to ruine it in others Souls as well as in his own Be ashamed at your pretensions as if you had hearts of flesh when you have hearts of stones the hearts of Tygers the hearts of Infidels or else you would pitty the miserable unconverted Souls And what if they desire not your help the more need you have to pitty them the less awakened they are out of their cursed security the more miserable and dangerous is their state O! Put on the bowells of Jesus Christ carry not your selves in an high proud way in a lofty magisterial way towards these poor Souls Do not think thou hast discharged duty towards them by running into a corner and backbiting them for blindness hardness contempt of Christ c. but rather help them to some of your eye-salve that they may see Consider you have Tallents and account you must for them and be-think your selves whether you may not give a better account by endeavouring to reduce these poor Souls that are straying to Hell than by letting them alone to damn themselves Consider sadly what answer you will make when Christ shall arise and plead with you when Christ shall say Where is thy Brother Will Cain's answer serve Am I my Brothers keeper Will not Christ reply on you Did not I come from Heaven on purpose to redeem these perish Souls Did not I charge you to

you cannot so exhort as Ministers c. But have you not been told that God can work by small means as well as by great and that by things that are not God can confound the wisdome of the flesh and bring to naught the things that are Is not this like the pretence of not being eloquent Do you not know have you not heard that the issue and event depends on the blessng of the Lord rather than on the work it self Is it not all one to the Lord to wound by a short as by a long sword Cannot God bless a few words in thy mouth as he did in Christs and the Apostles Can'st not thou say follow Christ and may not presently a Matthew a Publican leave his sinfull courses and embrace the Christian faith Can'st thou not say Repent and Believe that your sins may be blotted out and may not God concur with thee as he did of old times Is the Lords hand shortned that it cannot help If Israel be not gathered yet thy reward is with the Lord if thine heart were upright and could testifie that night and day thou hast not ceased to warn to rebuke and counsel Certainly your memories are not so bad but you must remember the weight of sin and of the wrath of God you have seen the wonders of the Lord in the deeps you that have escaped to shoar can tell of the Rocks and Shelves and Storms which you have been delivered from and will you set other Shipwrack their Souls rather than hold out your light unto them 〈…〉 may avoyd their ruines What shall I say to humble you There is more 〈◊〉 in Hell than you can afford Blush blush and be ashamed to have less zeal love and pitty to perishing Souls than Dives in Hell had he would have his Brethren saved from the Valley of Hinnom Your silence will make others think that Hell is a tollerable place that sin is not so evil and bitter a thing that to lye under Gods wrath is not so great a misery whilst you are so slow and backward to warn your Friends and Acquaintance that they slee from these and take Sanctuary in the true City of Refuge the Lord Jesus Christ O! If you know the worth of a Soul pitty the multitude with whom the day is not broke whose forlorn Souls are under a continual Massacre from the bloudy Butcher of Hell Besmear your Souls no longer with the guilt of their bloud Let them not starve for want of bread whilst you have to give them I shall bless God for ever and ever if this your negligence of the Souls of those whom you may account without may be cordially bewailed and you for the future double your diligence for their conversion Ministers cannot convert without the Concourse of Omnipotency neither can you Though Satan and thy own lazy heart hath told thee thou art unfit to set upon this work yet better do it meanly than wholy omit it God like Parents on earth loves to see his Children lift at those duties which are too hard for them and then he steps in and is a Co-worker with them What God did by illiterate Fishermen by Priscilla he can do by thee The Lord pardon thy former unmercifulness to the Souls of men But if thou continue careless and cruel if thou wilt not by Prayers for them and counsels to them seek their reducement as sure as thou art reading the voyce of thy Brothers blood is crying against thee from the earth By your example before if not since Profession you have been the cause of the destruction of Souls of how many who can tell And as Jeroboam made Israel to sin many years after he was rotten in his grave so your sin your wicked examples may propagate the trade of sin from generation to generation until Christ shall come to Judgement Tremble tremble at the thoughts of it if thou hast not the heart of a Beast in thee O! how many Souls are crying in Hell against thee cursing the day they knew thee or their Ancestours knew thee for that by thee they learned to sin the more and were strengthned in their wickedness by thy tongue and by thy life And now are not you bound to do your utmost to make restitution to labour to save them that be alive Is it not reasonable that you should labour to win Souls to Gods as you have to the Devils service and to have many blessing God in the Heavens for you that ever they were in the company of such an active zealous Christian who by word and life was instrumental to bring them to the knowledge of themselves and of their God And is it not a glorious work to hold forth such Light to the World that they seeing your good works may glorifie God and you may be Propagators of Zeal and Holiness from Generation to Generation till Christ shall appear to judge the World and to reward you for all the services you have done to his Name O! how welcome shall that man be to Heaven and Christ who hath fed the Souls and clothed the Souls and visited the Souls which he hath purchased with his own precious blood Christ will own thee for his Benefactour CHAP. XXXVII The Dis-ingenuity and Scandalousness of their Miscarriages WHen God had given the Prophet Ezekiel a large Catalogue of Judah's Abominations The wickedness of the former miscarriages Ezek. 8.9 V. 6 13 15. he then shew'd him the Wickedness of their Abominations He said unto me Goe in and Behold the wicked Abominations they do here He commanded him once and again and again to turn him yet again and he should see greater Abominations I cannot indeed promise thee that thou shalt now see greater Abominations than those already mentioned All that I shall now do shall be to represent the former Miscarriages in their crimson dye and scarlet colour And The First Thing I shall mention Commitred against so good and kind a God Eph. 4.30 as making your Sins Professours out of measure sinful is your Dis-ingenuity in so sinning against God O! You have sinned against a gracious God You have grieved the good Spirit of God whereby some amongst you have been sealed to the day of Redemption I am bold to say that one godly man's sinning against light and mercy doth more break the heart of God than the bruitish Sins of a Pagan Kingdom Ezek. 6.9 I am broken saith God with your whorish heart which hath departed from me c. And ye shall loath your selves for your evils which ye have committed in your abominations Amos 2.13 God hath been press'd down with your sins as the Cart with sheaves till he hath even Creak'd under the weight God expected more from the Treet planted in Zion than from the wild ones in the Wilderness Luke 13.9 Grief and Burthen springs much from unexpected Unkindnesses I looked for Fruit and there was none How were David's and Saul's Sins aggravated from